News of a mini-expansion for GSB arrives over on the Positech blog. Cliffski says: “…current plans for the pack are to introduce a new race to the game. It will have the same variety of ships as the other races. The ships will also have a few race-specific modules, and some quite drastic ship bonuses. It was a relief to work out that ship bonuses can be negative, meaning this new batch of ships will have weak shields, weak armor, and very strong hulls.” He’s not yet decided on a price for said expansion, claiming he only wishes to recoup the cost of making it.

The irrational fear of DLC is absurd. Yes, some DLC is not worth the money but it is overall a better development model than boxed expansions. The time where PC gaming was a land of milk, honey and free content updates, where every company was literally falling over themselves to give you something for nothing and games were supported, updated and expanded gratis for years….

was a myth. Snap out of it, it never ever happened. Free content updates were the exception and not the rule, you’d be lucky to even get all the bugs patched out of a game before it was dropped in favour of the next big thing. I’ve been gaming for 22 years and I swear on my grandmother’s grave that this free content bonanza never happened.

This isn’t horse armor. It adds significant content to the game (but not, notably, content that necessarily should have come with the game in the first place), it was developed *after* the game was released, and it’s done by an independent developer who needs the money to fund development, not a giant company that’s already made millions on the game.

PREPOSTEROUS! How dare Cliffski not provide this work for free, doesn’t he realise we paid for the original and are entitled to at least 6 years of content updates gratis? Damn those money-grubbing indie developers stomping on the faces of helpless gamers!

This is a guy that posts threads on his own blog to ask people what a reasonable price point is for his new titles, I can pretty much guarantee you he’s going to do exactly what he said in this case. Cliff is good people.

Sounds good, though I have to admit I’d still absolutely love it if GSB’s battles had some kind of coherent context/structure. It could be completely absurd, in keeping with the title, but fighting a series of battles over something gratuitous with consequences for what happens in each would be more interesting that the one-off fights we have now.

And yes, I’m aware that on some level I’m missing the whole point. The old school strategy gamer in me can’t help it.

Cliffski is more than one person O.o I KNEW there had to be something up with this game turning out interesting and thought provoking games all by himself, now it all makes sense. Cliff is good “people”!!!! Cloner! It’s like Multiplicity but good, Cliffski is a much better clone base than Michael Keaten, I AM THE BATMAN